[URBAN NOTE] "Don’t feel sorry for Rob Ford"

The very strongly anti-Ford weekly NOW Toronto has a column up, by Enzo Di Matteo, that is not at all sympathetic to Rob Ford.

Justice Hackland has done Toronto, turned laughingstock by a buffoon, a big favour.

Of course, in Ford’s mind it was everybody else’s fault when the news broke and he found himself unceremoniously dumped.

After the verdict, the mayor showed up at a meeting of his closest advisers in his muddy sweats (he’d been putting his football team through practice in preparation for the next day’s Metro Bowl at the Rogers Centre) – and in deep denial.

When he met the crush of reporters waiting outside his City Hall office, he blamed “left-wing politics” for his defeat and promised to fight the decision “tooth and nail.”

It seems the vast left-wing conspiracy against the mayor includes Justice Hackland, who was appointed by Ford’s fishing buddy in Ottawa, Stephen Harper. One Sun TV commentator said “homosexual extremists” were responsible for the judge’s decision. Yup. Those fucking downtown elites were picking on their boy again.

Ford’s was a pathetic performance. By the time his brother Doug took to the airwaves late Monday afternoon to do damage control on AM 640, Newstalk 1010 and the Stephen LeDrew show, the talking points had changed to how Ford’s football foundation was helping kids in priority neighbourhoods.

Doug Ford also pointed the inevitable finger at other politicians who’ve burned money on assorted wasteful projects. Ford friendlies in the media quickly seized on the Liberals’ gas plant fiasco as a subject of comparison. I hear a march on the office of Clayton Ruby, the lawyer who made the winning case against Ford, may be in the works. And so went the chest-beating by the Ford camp.

[URBAN NOTE] "Give Toronto council a time-out"

The traditionally pro-Ford Toronto Sun, in the person of its columnist Mike Strobel, responded to Ford's expulsion from office by arguing that city council as a whole should also be kicked out of office, removing democratic representation entirely.

(Strobel last appeared here as the author of a column in his paper criticizing Slutwalk, comparing women to prey animals. "There are no such marches on Manitoulin Island, where my cabin nestles. But there are lots of deer. And lots of hunters.")

The gist of Hackland's ruling is that Ford should not have voted last February when council considered making him pay $3,150 he'd solicited for his football charity using city letterhead.

Council voted overwhelmingly in Ford's favour, so his own vote was meaningless, except it's a technical breach of the province's harsh municipal ethics rules.

So what of the other councillors? I say give 'em two years for being accessories to the mayor's "crime," for aiding and abetting, or even for not reporting it.

[. . .]

Other offences: Being unusually childish, obtuse, partisan, self-serving and dysfunctional.

Rarely outside of Korea has local politics seen such yapping, mewling, growling, pouting, posturing, sneering and jeering. It has even nearly come to blows, Korean-style, between councillors.

And it's confusing. I forget, are we getting subways, LRT or horse-drawn wagons?

[LINK] Two notes on Russian influence in small Mediterranean states

I've come across two news stories recently talking about Russian investment in and migration to Montenegro and Cyprus. Russia has developed intimate relationships with the former Yugoslav republic aspiring for European Union membership or the divided eastern Mediterranean island that's already inside the European Union for the same reasons: based on sentimental ties of Orthodox Christianity and an appreciation of warm scenic beauty, Russians set up shop in these two countries in large numbers. Indeed, such is the degree of Russian influence that some western Europeans claim concerns.

Aggregation site Presseurop hosts a translation of an article by Jan Hunin published in Amsterdam's De Volksrant, "The Russians invade the Adriatic coast".

[S]o many Russians have flocked to the Montenegrin coast in recent years that Budva is sometimes nicknamed Moscow-on-Sea. Even in the low season, the nearby airport provides three flights a day to the Russian capital.

But not only tourists are on board, as a strikingly high number of Russians, especially from the middle class, have moved for good to the Adriatic coast. They are there to serve their compatriots who overrun the coast during the peak season or have a profession that they can also practice abroad.

In a way these Russians are following a century-old tradition, for in the 19th nineteenth century well-off Russians drifted to the Crimea or the Mediterranean, in search of warmer climes. But the weather is no longer the most important reason for their migration. It is at the Adriatic coast that they find the peace and quiet so lacking in Russia. Especially Moscow has, according to many, becoming an impossible place to live in.

The first thing that Nadja Lapteva noticed when she landed in Montenegro was the word "polako". "It means take it easy, relax, expressions that I had forgotten existed in Moscow. There, everybody is in a hurry.” Last year she made an attempt to return to Moscow. But the daily traffic jams were too much for her. She now runs one of the three Russian schools in Budva.

[. . .]

This has not tempered the Russian’s love, however. Fact is that Montenegro has something that the other Mediterranean countries cannot offer: a culture that is remarkably similar to that of Russia. Like the Russians, the Montenegrins are Orthodox and, as Slavs, their languages are related. Even their coats of arms are remarkably similar. Also the fact that the Russians do not require a visa makes it just that little bit easier.

France 24 hosts the AFP article "EU bailout or not, Russian cash in Cyprus to stay".

Property advertisements in Cyrillic letters, Russian radio and newspapers and even schools in the coastal resort of Limassol spell out the identity of Cyprus's top foreign investors.

The allegedly dubious sources of Russian deposits in Cypriot banks, which total $26 billion, well over Cyprus's GDP of $17 billion, are pipped as a potential cause for economic difficulty for the small Mediterranean island.

[. . .]

Many Russians are here for the long term, taking Cypriot citizenship and settling down, and are providing important economic activity for the island, even those not in the millionaire bracket.

"I really fell in love with the place," said Karina Luneva, who moved to Cyprus to work and study, and bought a property seven years ago.

She was full of praise for the island's "beautiful climate, friendly people, nice environment... and low crime rate," and said she would not return to settle in Russia.

[. . .]

An estimated 50,000 Russians reside in the Greek Cypriot-run Republic of Cyprus, making up five percent of the population of more than 800,000. A smaller community lives in the breakaway Turkish Cypriot north of the island.

[. . .]

The Greek Cypriots and Russians share the Orthodox Church, and several Cypriot politicians, including President Demetris Christofias, are Moscow-educated.

[LINK] "Albanians in Balkans vow to unite 'within EU'"

This Agence France-Presse article speaks to an interesting phenomenon. Is sentiment for a Greater Albanian state including all the major Albanian-populated areas of the western Balkans actually growing?

The leaders of Albania and Kosovo vowed to achieve unity for ethnic Albanians in the region during the centennial celebration of Albania's independence in the Macedonian capital Sunday but said it should be "within EU boundaries".

"Through the European Union we are going to realise the project of our national unity," Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha told some 10,000 people in Skopje.

Berisha insisted that states bordering Albania should not fear this unity.

"I urge all the neighbours to understand that the national unity of Albanians is nothing wrong," he said, cheered by a crowd chanting "Great Albania" and waving Albanian red flags.

His words were echoed by Kosovo prime minister Hashim Thaci, who said that Albanians in the region, including the minorities in Serbia and Macedonia, were "stronger than ever and should work together."

[. . .]

No incidents were reported during the celebration, which has heightened tensions in Macedonia, prompting police to step up security and Interior Minister Gordana Jankuloska to appeal for calm amid fears of possible inter-ethnic violence.

Several incidents had been reported in recent days, with youths setting ablaze the flags of rival communities in Skopje and the Albanian-dominated northwestern town of Tetovo.

A leader of Macedonia's ethnic Albanians and former guerilla leader-turned-politician, Ali Ahmeti, whose party organised Sunday's celebration, also called for respect because "a nation that seeks its rights can not disrespect the rights of others."

[LINK] "Serbia's Future: Back to the Past"

Hosted at the website of the Institute for Policy Studies, John Feffer's extended interview with Serbian human rights activist Sonia Biserko, about the collapse of Yugoslavia, the peculiarities of Serbian nationalism, and Serbia's prospects for the future (grim, she thinks, unless there's change and honest recognition of past ills), makes for interesting reading.

The war in Yugoslavia began as a conflict over state structure. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the nationalist movements in the republics championed greater autonomy only to be suppressed in turn by Tito, who then went on to incorporate many of their demands in the 1974 Yugoslav constitution. In 1989, Slobodan Milosevic signaled his intentions to assert Serbian dominance within the federation by removing the autonomous status of Kosovo and Vojvodina. When I was in the region the following year, debate raged over the nature of the Yugoslav federation: should it be a loose confederation, a more democratic federation, or a state in which Serbia reigned first among equals.

In 1990, Sonja Biserko was in the very middle of these debates. She was working in the Yugoslav foreign ministry at the time, an ideal vantage point for witnessing the disintegration of the federation. She ultimately resigned her position and embarked on a career in human rights through the organization she founded, the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia. As one of the early critics of Milosevic, she has also been resolute in her critique of Serbian nationalism. She worked to document war crimes and promote dialogue with Kosovo. These positions were not popular, to the say the least, among right-wing extremists and their more mainstream supporters, but Biserko has bravely continued to speak her mind.

She points out that Milosevic and his team were fundamentally anti-institutional and relied on the power of the mob. “This was how they destroyed not only the Yugoslav federation and its institutions but also Serbian institutions,” she points out. “We are now still living in this provisional state. We don’t have a modern state.” Serbia, in other words, is still struggling with the legacy of Milosevic. And the same policies that tore apart the federal structure of Yugoslavia are now threatening Serbia itself, as Belgrade treats provinces like Vojvodina much as it did the republics of Slovenia and Croatia during the Milosevic era.

Biserko does not mince words about what Serbia must do to change course. First of all, Serbians have to grapple with the nationalist project, spelled out back in 1986 in an infamous memo from the Serbian Academy of Arts and Science, which contributed so much to the war and suffering of the 1990s. “In order to put the region in order, Serbia has the most homework to do,” she says. “Other countries also have homework to do, but they won’t do it until they see that Serbia has started the process. This doesn’t mean putting Serbia in a corner. But we should know, especially the young generation, why it happened. People have to understand what was behind all this.”